experiencing first time parenthood in stereo

Month: January 2016

Last December we hardly dared imagine a Christmas with our babies. I was 26 weeks pregnant and it was five weeks after an extremely risky surgery on my placenta. We had so many hopes but we knew the risks were high.

Our babies had Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome, a deadly disease that affects a small percentage of identical twin pregnancies. You can read all about my twin pregnancy here. Against all the odds, the boys made it through. They were very premature and very small but they made it.

And this year we had two 11 month old bundles of fun to spend Christmas with. Here’s a few snaps from the festive season!

I love the Christmas stocking tradition. My mum made the best stockings ever and I still got one until two years ago (!) when I got married and the mantle was passed to Mr C. He’s been doing a great job of carrying on the tradition. This is us hanging the twins’ stockings on Christmas Eve! I’m sure they didn’t really have a clue what was going on, but they made a fantastic attempt at joining in with Mummy and Daddy’s excitement.

On Christmas Eve, they gave us a rather fabulous gift of a full nights sleep! Unfortunately it was one of the very few full nights sleep we saw over the two week holiday.

On Christmas morning, before we headed to Church, the boys came down to a bag of presents each to open and play with. The wrapping paper was definitely the biggest hit!

It’s been a really special time, sharing our celebration of the Christmas story and all that it means with our beautiful little miracles.

After our Christmas morning service at Church, we headed up to my parents house. The boys are such sociable wee things and they just love all the attention when there are plenty of grandparents , aunties, uncles and cousins around.

The best purchase I made this Christmas were these high-chair toys. They kept the boys entertained the whole way through a delicious Christmas Lunch.

We had a lovely few weeks spending lots of time with the boys and with both sides of the family. I loved having Mr C at home for two weeks. Looking after baby twins is a lot easier with two pairs of hands!

But just to keep it real (!) the photos don’t show everything and like every other parent at Christmas, there’s a lot of mania behind the scenes!

They don’t show the hours that went into the planning and packing for a few nights away over Christmas and New Year. It doesn’t show the despair on our faces at 3am when the twins were both screaming and we just didn’t know how to settle them!Amplify the panic to settle screaming babies when they start to waken all of their little cousins who were staying in the same house.

The last minute Christmas-shopping trips that needed to be fitted around the daily bottle, nap, meal schedules weren’t exactly straightforward.

And there’s no photographic evidence of the number of coffees and the volume of under eye concealer that saw me through the last two weeks!!! But all things considered, it was pretty special really.

How was your Christmas? You can join in the conversation below or tweet me and let me know! You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest if you’d like to see more posts.